Women In Art video – A survey of 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art – lacking in women of color, but otherwise a celebration of feminine beauty. Related book: Seeing Ourselves : Women’s Self-Portraits, by Frances Borzello – “…self-portraits across eight centuries, deftly weaving together art and social history, the biographies of many [...]
“American Idol” finalist Katharine McPhee has acknowledged that she fought a five-year battle with bulimia, and had childhood reading problems that sabotaged her self-esteem and made her turn to food for comfort. “Low self-esteem was huge for me,” McPhee said. “I was always the pretty little girl who was stupid. That was really difficult… I [...]
“Drawing is sort of therapy for me. I draw in between film shooting sessions, I draw while flying on airplanes, and sometimes when I have days off.” Actor Jane Seymour [from the page Painting 2] Actively making a life of meaning beyond work can help keep us emotionally healthy and creatively dynamic. Gabriel Byrne notes [...]
One study has shown that as young as the fifth grade, Asian-American girls have the highest rate of depression… “Model minority” pressure — the pressure some Asian-American families put on children to be high achievers at school and professionally — helps explain the problem. Professor Eliza Noh says, “In my study, the model minority pressure [...]
Elisabeth Shue has been inspired by her new film “Gracie,” based on her own early life, which included playing soccer, to pursue her ambition to play tennis professionally. A recent LA Times article [Whose life is it anyway?, By Gina Piccalo, May 27] notes, “After months of intense training, the 43-year-old aspires to be ranked [...]
Harvard Professor Ellen Langer and colleague Alia Crum reported that they took 84 hotel workers and told one group that “the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle.†Langer and Crum told the control group nothing. Four weeks later, the control group hadn’t [...]
“I really don’t know how to be anyone else, and whenever I try to be anyone else, I fail miserably. Or I disappoint myself. It doesn’t build my self-esteem, and it doesn’t help me grow me at all.” ~ ~ “It was a very vulnerable time going from being insecure about my body and who [...]
Much of this site is about thinking, about exploring perspectives and ideas that can help us make more sense of how we operate, and be more fully conscious and creative. But in his stimulating book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell writes about “rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens [...]
Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck): We’re both rotten. Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray): Only you’re a little more rotten. [Double Indemnity, 1944] Those sort of critical insults may be fun in movies or novels, but how we think of ourselves – or what we accept others saying about us – can have a deep influence on how we [...]
Samantha Larson became the youngest foreign woman to scale Mount Everest, according to the Nepalese Mountaineering Department. A 15-year-old Sherpa girl from Nepal was the youngest ever to climb the peak. Larson said Everest was “much harder, longer and higher” than the other peaks she has tackled in the past. “There were a lot of [...]
In an interview about acting in her new film Bug, Ashley Judd describes the state of mind she values in her work: “For me, what I look for is to do a take and have very little if any memory of what just happened. That’s the sort of take where I’m satisfied and sated and [...]
“The more you know, the more competent you will become. And the more competent you become, the greater your sense of self-esteem and confidence. This equals increased personal power – the sure mark of an achiever on the road to prosperity. “BUT – many very successful people insist it’s equally important to read and study [...]
Many people make use of their abilities and achieve satisfaction in life by becoming focused pros or even experts in one area. But many others keep exploring multiple talents, interests and passions. In her article Are You a Scanner?, Barbara Sher identifies people with “intense curiosity about numerous unrelated subjects” who are “endlessly inquisitive and [...]
So much of our culture, including mass media, entertainment and commercial interests, emphasize relationships – pursuing them, celebrating them, making ourselves fit and competitive enough to have a “good” one. Writer Jessica Valenti thinks “the romantic industrial complex” can be destructive to both men and women, because it reinforces these ill gender roles that position [...]
Christopher Gardner [to his son]: “You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can’t do it. You want something? Go get it. Period.” Chris Gardner [photo] was played by Will Smith in the movie based on his life and book: The Pursuit of Happyness, [...]
In a recent interview [Miranda Writes, by Scott Indrisek, Radar Magazine], writer, actor and director Miranda July refers to making an upcoming book based on to her web project, Learning to Love You More, and finding many creative projects submitted by “ordinary people.” “I assume that not everyone is trying to be a famous artist,” [...]
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Site author: Douglas Eby, M.A./Psychology, is a writer and researcher on the psychology of creative expression and personal growth, especially for high ability adults. He is publisher of the Talent Development Resources series of sites.
